Industrial Efficiency and Decarbonization Office (IEDO) Fiscal Year 2024 Cross-Sector Technologies FOA | DE FOA 0003206

Opportunity Information: Apply for DE FOA 0003206

The U.S. Department of Energy, through its Industrial Efficiency and Decarbonization Office (IEDO), released this Fiscal Year 2024 Cross-Sector Technologies Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) to push forward practical, high-impact technologies that can cut industrial energy use and greenhouse gas emissions. The focus is on applied research, development, and pilot-scale validation and demonstration, meaning projects are expected to move beyond early concepts and generate credible performance evidence in relevant industrial settings. The work funded under this FOA is meant to directly support the strategies laid out in DOE's Industrial Decarbonization Roadmap and contribute to the goals of the Industrial Heat Shot, all aligned with the broader national target of reaching net-zero emissions by 2050.

The FOA is organized into three topic areas that reflect major cross-cutting decarbonization needs across many industrial subsectors. Topic Area 1, Electrification of Industrial Heat, targets technologies that can replace fossil-fired thermal energy with electric alternatives, especially for process heat where decarbonization is notoriously difficult. Topic Area 2, Efficient Energy Use in Industrial Systems, concentrates on reducing the overall energy intensity of industrial operations through system-level efficiency gains, advanced controls, improved equipment, or integrated process innovations that deliver measurable reductions in energy consumption and associated emissions. Topic Area 3, Decarbonizing Organic Wastewater and Wet Waste Treatment, addresses emissions and energy use tied to processing wet wastes and organic wastewater, where methane and other greenhouse gases can be significant and where improved treatment technologies can both cut emissions and potentially recover value (for example, through energy or resource recovery).

This funding opportunity sits within DOE's broader Technologies for Industrial Emissions Reduction Development (TIEReD) Program. The program is designed as an "innovation pipeline" that links scientific and engineering advances to real-world industrial adoption, combining investments in R&D, early pilot demonstrations, and enabling activities like technical assistance and workforce development. TIEReD is explicitly cross-office: it draws on expertise and resources from DOE offices including Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), Fossil Energy and Carbon Management (FECM), Nuclear Energy (NE), ARPA-E, and the Office of Science (SC). The intent is to coordinate applied research and early demonstrations with later-stage scale-up and deployment pathways, complementing the large demonstration and deployment efforts led by DOE's Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations (OCED), the Office of Manufacturing and Energy Supply Chains (MESC), and financing support mechanisms associated with the Loan Programs Office (LPO).

From an administrative standpoint, this is a discretionary funding opportunity administered by DOE's Golden Field Office. Awards are planned as cooperative agreements, which typically means DOE expects substantial involvement during the project period (for example, through technical reviews, milestone approvals, or active project management), rather than a hands-off grant structure. The opportunity is listed under CFDA 81.086, and the FOA number is DE-FOA-0003206. DOE anticipated making around 15 awards, with an award ceiling of $5,000,000 per project. The original application closing date listed for this FOA was March 26, 2024, and the opportunity was created on November 17, 2023.

Eligibility is described as "unrestricted" at the high level in the source fields, but the FOA includes important topic-specific limits that matter in practice. For Topic Areas 1 and 2, certain government entities cannot serve as the prime recipient: Federal agencies and instrumentalities (other than DOE), and state, local, and tribal government entities are excluded as prime applicants. However, those government entities may still participate as subrecipients, which allows them to contribute technical capabilities, facilities, or implementation support without leading the award. Topic Area 3 is more narrowly defined around the waste space: eligibility is restricted to "waste facilities" and qualified for-profit and non-profit entities as eligible primes or subrecipients, while Federally Funded Research and Development Centers (FFRDCs), other federal agencies and instrumentalities, and educational institutions may participate only as subrecipients. The FOA directs applicants to the full eligibility language in Section III.B of the official FOA document on EERE Exchange (https://eere-exchange.energy.gov/), which is where the detailed definitions, conditions, and any exceptions are spelled out.

Overall, the opportunity is built for teams that can credibly show a path to meaningful industrial emissions reductions using technologies that apply across multiple industrial settings, not just a single niche. DOE is signaling that it wants transformational approaches with enough maturity to be proven at pilot scale, tied to roadmap priorities, and structured in a way that accelerates eventual adoption in the U.S. industrial sector.

• The Golden Field Office in the energy sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "Industrial Efficiency and Decarbonization Office (IEDO) Fiscal Year 2024 Cross-Sector Technologies FOA" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 81.086.
• This funding opportunity was created on 2023-11-17.
• Applicants must submit their applications by 2024-03-26. (Agency may still review applications by suitable applicants for the remaining/unused allocated funding in 2026.)
• Each selected applicant is eligible to receive up to $5,000,000.00 in funding.
• The number of recipients for this funding is limited to 15 candidate(s).
• Eligible applicants include: Unrestricted.

Apply for DE FOA 0003206

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